Free as in Freedom episode 0x0b

March 15, 2011

Bradley and Karen
have an introductory discussion on how non-profit governance interacts
with Free Software projects and what issues are important for
developers who want their project to have a non-profit existence.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

Bradley and Karen tend to agree that non-profit settings are better
places to foster and help Free Software development. (03:40)

Bradley mentioned that Roland McGrath wrote GNU C
Library (and other GNU programs) while working as an employee at the FSF, and many of those programs are now
often maintained by Red Hat (or other company's) developers, under the
auspices of the GNU project, as overseen by the FSF. (04:50)

Corporate form and organization questions should be secondary to
project leadership ones. (09:50)

One of the most important things is to have an organization in a
place where people are willing to do the work to keep the organization
going. (20:10)

Enthusiasm to keep the organization running is the most important
resource for running the organization. (22:26)

Free as in Freedom episode 0x03

November 23, 2010

Karen and Bradley discuss the debates regarding Apple's online store
restrictions that make it impossible to distribute GPL'd software via
Apple's store. Then, they discuss question the usefulness of the term
“Open Core”

Running time: 00:45:04.

Show Notes

Note: Bradley's audio was too low compared to Karen's on this
episode. We're still sorting out our recording issues, and apologize
for this. This is completely Bradley's fault: don't blame Producer
Dan. :)

Bradley mentioned that the game Go has been around thousands of
years, although according the Go Wikipedia entry,
it's been around for approximately 2,500 years. (08:21)

Bradley pointed out that the primary goal of GPL enforcement is to get
compliance, not to get companies to cease distribution, but sometimes
the companies prefer to cease distribution rather than complying with
the license. (09:57)

Bradley mentioned that Apple lawyers have a pathological hatred of
GPL, which he believes comes directly down from Steve Jobs, who began his
dislike of GPL when he tried, while at NeXT, to distribute a proprietary
front-end for GCC for Objective-C. (RMS discussed the story briefly in
his essay Copyleft:
Pragmatic Idealism.) (23:45)

episode

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:33)

Bradley is President of the Software Freedom Conservancy, and Karen is one of the Conservancy's pro bono lawyers. Karen is also an officer of the Conservancy, and Bradley is a director of the FSF. Got that?(03:17)

Bradley mentioned that C# descends from J++ work inside
Microsoft, which became a point of contention between Sun and
Microsoft. (06:50)

Bradley mentioned his blog
post that has the same topic as this podcast. (11:17)

Meanwhile, back at the point is a reference to LUG Radio, which
is based on the phrase Meanwhile, back at the ranch. The origins of the latter
phrase is likely unclear, although an
unsourced Wikipedia article claims it was a phrase frequently used
by narrators of black & white American cowboy movies and TV shows of the
1940s and 1950s. (12:18)

Bradley mentioned that very few companies have made an overreaching
promise to licenses all their patents in a way acceptable for Free
Software. Red Hat
is one of them, although their promise isn't perfect, it has some
value. (33:34)

Karen noted a few legal points: works are covered by copyright for
a limited period of time, and then fall into the “public
domain”. (21:00) There is also a concept of “fair
use” of works still under copyright. Further, the DMCA provides
for criminal penalties if you circumvent technological anti-copying
measures. (22:09)

Brett and Bradley discussed how old and ground-breaking the FDL was.
FDL
was first released in March 2000. Bradley didn't have a chance to
tell his story as to why the first version was 1.1; maybe he will
sometime. :)

The Software Freedom Law Show episode 0x00

November 11, 2008

The Software Freedom Law Center is proud to announce its new podcast,
The Software Freedom Law Show. Hosted by Bradley
M. Kuhn and Karen Sandler,
this bi-weekly podcast will bring interviews and explanations on legal
issues related to Free, Libre and Open Software Software (FLOSS).

Our first episode introduces the format and the hosts interview each
other so you can get to know them better.

Bradley probably had his dates mixed up of his first GNU/Linux
install. 0.99pl12 came out in early 1993, so he probably
installed SLS
in early 1993 during his sophomore year in college. He found his Xconfig
file from his old laptop with a filedate of 15 December 1993.
(Remember when you had to write Xconfigs by hand and they would break
your monitor if you did it wrong?) (20:44)

Karen mentioned doing a “Choose your own essay” program in
C for Eben when she was law school, based on the idea
of Choose
Your Own Adventure books, which both Karen and Bradley read as
children. (25:43)